Looking at the matter simply from an artistic point of view, we see no reason to regret that Mrs Stowe should keep to her original ground of Negro and planter life, any more than that Scott should have introduced Highland life into Rob Roy and The Fair Maid of Perth, when he had already written Waverley. Mrs Stowe has invented the Negro novel, and it is a novel not only fresh in its scenery and its manners, but possessing that conflict of races which Augustin Thierry has pointed out as the great source of romantic interest – witness Ivanhoe. Inventions in literature are not as plentiful as inventions in the paletot and waterproof department, and it is rather amusing that we reviewers, who have, for the most part, to read nothing but imitations of imitations, should put on airs of tolerance towards Mrs Stowe because she has written a second Negro novel, and make excuses for her on the ground that she perhaps would not succeed in any other kind of fiction. Probably she would not; for her genius seems to be of a very special character: her Sunny Memories were as feeble as her novels are powerful. But whatever else she may write, or may not write, Uncle Tom and Dred will assure her a place in that highest rank of novelists who can give us a national life in all its phases – popular and aristocratic, humorous and tragic, political and religious.